The Onishi Gallery is proud to present the photography of Aruha Yamaoka in an exhibition entitled Pulse. This is Yamaoka’s first solo exhibition in New York, and the work of this important young photographer has occasioned eager anticipation.
Frank Franca, a photographer and a faculty at the International Center of Photography and at Pratt Institute, summarizes the interest that Yamaoka has garnered in the following text:
“As a young Japanese woman living in New York City, Aruha Yamaoka’s exposure to its myriad of cultures has made her keenly aware of the ways in which cultural identity plays out in this cosmopolitan environment. Going about her life, doing the ordinary things that are universal to our shared experience as citizens of the city, she often encounters misconstrued cultural, racial and gender traits projected onto her. Having these alien roles thrust upon her has made her sensitive to the signals she sends out, and to how they might be perceived by those who share a background very different to her own. As she examines these projections, she is intrigued by the dynamic between what she might be signaling and what others might be perceiving.
This interplay of assumptions has inspired in her a type of mirror of self-evaluation. As she comes to terms with these illusions and realities, she is intrigued by the ways in which they might actually be changing her, marking her both physically and spiritually and ultimately imprinting themselves onto her very being.
Aruha’s self-portraits are her record. In them she attempts to record who she is, who she has been, and who she is becoming. These delicately nuanced explorations of her body are her attempt at a type of validation. At the same time they illustrate an open process in which she attempts to understand while trying to explain.”
“Using a muted color palette, her gently beautiful images, with their soft light and careful composition provoke a quiet meditation in the viewer. As if holding up a small hand mirror to herself, and looking into it, she is meticulously focusing on the details in an attempt to grasp the whole. In the process, she is urging us to join her in her explorations and to examine our own presumptions and the facile ways in which we often look at things. Aruha’s tender studies invite us all to ponder timeless notions of beauty, femininity, history, aging, love, pain and other universal truths known to us all.”